The VA Says

Bargain Alert: 50% Off Internet Training

VAs and online business owners need to perform certain functions to maintain an online presence. They need to be able to build a simple sales page. Increasingly, they need to have a presence on Twitter and Facebook and perhaps some of the other social networks. 

And no one wants to be held hostage to their web designer. Especially when he (or she) goes out of town when all you need to do is make a simple change, but you need to do it sooner rather than later. 

Erin Blaskie, VA turned internet strategist, has developed a number of online trainings in a downloadable format. But I have learned to wait until a holiday before purchasing. Because Erin often steeply discounts her products during a holiday.

If you buy between May 25th and May 27th, you can save 50% from her normal price.

It's worth checking out. http://budurl.com/mderin

URL shortening services: What to look for?

Publicity hound Joan Stewart points out the following article regarding URL shorteners. 

There are more considerations to choosing a URL shortening service than just the ability to quickly and easily shorten your URLs. The ability to shorten a URL has always been important--to the average user who doesn't want to incorrectly copy long and clumsy links, to the affiliate marketer who wants to mask affiliate and tracking links, and now for Twitter users where the 140 character limit requires links be short and sweet.

Danny Sullivan points out that there are a number of criteria you may want to look at. 

First is the ability to do a 301 redirect in which the server tells the browser that the short url has "permanently" moved to the long URL. In a 301 redirect, the search engines give link credit to the short URL.

Some services offer tracking. You can get tracking stats whose depth varies by service. This is either a nice plus or critical information.

Then, you want to see link stability. A broken link is useless, but gauging link stability is difficult. You are dependent on the stability of the service--if they cease operations, say good-bye to your links. 

Twitter client support for those who use Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck. 

If using the service for Twitter links is important, then you want a service with the shortest possible domain name to use the least amount of characters. Tinyurl, for example comes in at 19 characters versus bit.ly which comes in at 13.

The complete article which compares the various URL shortening services can be found here:

http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204

Economy Bottoming Out?

Ben Bernanke, the Fed Reserve Board Chief, says that the economy is bottoming out and will turn up later this year. http://tinyurl.com/c5e826

But before you break out the champagne glasses, he warns that the recovery is likely to be sub-par and only gradually gain momentum. 

The good news? Little or no inflation. Vendors are still too shell shocked to raise prices.

The bad news? The recovery is very fragile and any reversals "could darken the economic outlook."

He claims that the financial system is gradually improving and the banking system is slowly healing. 

My question? So what is happening to all of the mysterious CDOs that screwed up bank balance sheets and why didn't the FDIC just come in and take over Citibank, etal like they do with smaller banks so we can just get this over with.

Nonetheless, I'm willing to take good news where I can find it. And it is my hope that the Feds use this opportunity to rebalance the financial system to support the tapped-out middle class who are the engine who drives the world economy.